About Me

9/17/09

Children Can Make Us Look Like Fools

Man, we just think we are so damn smart sometimes.

I’m in the midst of a massive marathon of the old "Our Gang" and "Little Rascals". I put about 8 discs in my Q on Netflix because I felt the need to watch something Old Timey. I’ve seen the odd episode since growing up, but I haven’t really re-watched them all as an adult much like I have done with The Sound of Music or The Wizard of Oz. They are deemed to be classics, but I feel like I am learning again what it means for something to be classic.

I’ve always thought of the Little Rascals as bunch of kids who got into trouble. We’d tell Mom, "It’s not like we’re as ‘bad’ as them". Sure, they ended up in trouble, but for the most part, they weren’t looking for trouble, they were looking for entertainment. These were a bunch of kids living in a time period where everything was tight much like today but without all our gadgets. They made due with makeshift toys and a wild imagination.If these kids were doing these things today, we’d call them bad. We’d say they were a nuisance or a bunch of troublemakers. But tonight I felt so enlightened by a few things I hadn’t really noticed before.

1. Their Fathers were either Chauvinistic, out working all the time, (or in Stimey’s case, in jail).

2. The Mothers were so overwhelmed with getting house chores done, there was little guidance or supervision (which purposely helps the plot get them into trouble, admittedly)

3. In most scenarios, the kids were acting out in defense of a third party. The Grandma was getting taking to the Cleaners by a crooked son-in-law, Petey was about to be shot by a Farmer who wrongfully accused him of eating his chickens etc

So really, how bratty and bad are they? It would seem it is always the Gang that ends up setting things right. Sure they are mischievous and curious, but I wouldn’t call them ‘bad’.

Tonight I watched an episode that broke my heart. Weezer had to listen to his parents fight and overheard his Dad threaten to divorce his Mom. So, he told Stimey that he wanted to get sick because his folks never fought when he was sick. He ended up eating a bucket or 2 of lard and the kids got into the medicine cabinet to help him feel better. The whole show looked like kids getting into trouble, but as an adult watching this I was mostly mad at the Father for bossing his wife around and being so irresponsible.

It’s said that something children lack is enough knowledge. But in reading the headlines on msn tonight, I realized that too much knowledge doesn’t exactly make for world peace, or even peace in our households and families.

I honestly think if we want the answers to getting along, we need to approach it more matter-of-factly like kids do. These kids actually pray for the adults. They come up with ingenious plans to get two people to get along. They take matters into their own hands to fix what needs fixing. And, the really interesting part? THEY FIX IT. It’s not visually very pretty and might be a bit messy at times, but they instinctively know better and quite often, it’s more than the adults know. Maybe we DO know better and yet, here we are day in and day out just trying to win our arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong and bad-mouth as many people as we can.

It simply can’t be as hard as we are making it out to be.

More love!Karen :)One of my very favorite quotes EVER;

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."~Pablo Picasso